 |
| Brandon Miller had to switch back to this mask mid-game after he was called for illegal equipment for still sporting his NLL cage in Tuesday's game against Peterborough. The Chiefs still won handily, 12-5. (Photo: Tim Prothero) |
The Six Nations Chiefs played host to
the Peterborough Lakers Tuesday night with a chance to clinch first
place in the Major Series Lacrosse regular season. They did more than
that. With a dominating 12-5 win, the Chiefs removed any doubt that
they are the favourites to win their third straight MSL title and
head out west to vie for their third straight Mann Cup.
The game was close through the first
period; when Cory Vitarelli's shot clanged off the post one
second before the buzzer, Peterborough still trailed 3-2 but were
right in the game, thanks largely to Matt Vinc's early
sharpness in turning aside a number of Chiefs opportunities.
Six Nations started to get to Vinc in
the second period, though, and Peterborough couldn't respond. Jeff
Shattler, Ryan Benesch, Dhane Smith and Randy
Staats scored unanswered goals in a 10-minute stretch to give the
Chiefs a stranglehold they wouldn't release.
Stephen Keogh had a pair of
shorthanded goals—one in the last minute of the second period and
one five minutes into the third—to further deflate the Lakers'
attempts to come back. Even getting a 5-minute major against Brandon
Miller because he had an illegal cage on his goalie helmet didn't
help the Peterborough cause. While Vitarelli banged home a power-play
goal on the resulting 5-on-3 power play (Peterborough requested the
call after Staats had taken an interference penalty), the Chiefs came
out of the whole thing even after Staats buried a shorthanded marker
during the major.
If anything, the penalty call may have
just given the Chiefs even more motivation for a potential finals
matchup against Peterborough. “If you call it, it's a penalty and
they decided to call it in a 10-4 game. I don't really understand,”
Miller said after the game. “Some people don't realize that that
kind of stuff can really go a long way down the road. For them to do
it tonight I thought was a little bush league. It just kind of
motivates you to play a little bit harder against them every night. I
don't think teams really understand the reverse effect that can
happen with calls like that. It fires me up, anyway.”
The strategy might have been more
effective if it had resulted in Miller being ejected from the game,
rather than just getting the major, because the Chiefs didn't have a
backup at the game and would have had to turn to one of their runners
to tend the pipes (a reprise of Colin
Doyle in the Mann Cup, anyone?)—assuming they had another
mask that he could have donned. As it turned out, they were able to
replace the cage on Miller's helmet and keep him in the net.
Lakers' Head Coach Mike Hasen
didn't pull a lot of punches in his assessment of his team's play.
“We weren't here. We were here in spirit, maybe, but mentally. We
took a lot of undisciplined, uncharacteristic stuff and we let that
control us instead of just fighting through things and playing,”
Hasen said. “We need from top to bottom to be smarter. As a staff,
we've got to change things up when things aren't working and we need
guys that we rely on to do their jobs. Everyone's got a job to do and
tonight, top to bottom, nobody did their job.”
